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Quote wall: Natalia Ginzburg

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On the bulletin board above my desk, I keep a handful of quotes that have taught me something, or that I hope to learn from.

Here's one:

When I write something I usually think it is very important and that I am a very fine writer. I think this happens to everyone. But there is one corner of my mind in which I know very well what I am, which is a small, a very small writer. I swear I know it. But that doesn't matter much to me.

—Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues

This one I came across while reading Sally Rooney's novel Beautiful World, Where Are You; Rooney uses it as the epigraph to the novel.

I do not think of myself as an important or fine writer; I perhaps think too much of myself as that very small writer. But maybe I shouldn't all the time.

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